Stop the Grind-to-the-Endgame madness!

[ShivenCasull]

That said, the next obvious connection becomes "what other purpose can AoE serve other than damage?", which then turns to the creation of more interesting mechanics, and upon seeing the large possibilities for more fun and tactical gameplay but also the work involved, SE may refuse to touch the subject at all.

I've always been a fan of AOE attacks having a secondary effect (frozen/burning ground) or even an area denial (firewall, stonewall, etc..)

[Shurrikhan]

I've always been a fan of AOE attacks having a secondary effect (frozen/burning ground) or even an area denial (firewall, stonewall, etc..)

Same. More advanced uses of different types of attacks (linear, conical, circular, self, etc) having different, though more or less obvious when you think about it as if the fight were more real, uses within threat mechanics would be cool too.

Heck, if you just add armor penetration similarly to block value (chance and amount), where things like a linear strike from the same placement and side would be more likely to hit the penetrated area (higher 'chance') since they have the same trajectory, that already makes for quite a few more options.

Take the secondary effects of elemental holding (your frozen/burning ground having an actual amount of Ice or Fire magic attached), and allow it to be transferred, you could end up with something like a Mor Dhona boss (very physically resistant and only vulnerable to de-elementized magic, or all types of elements at once) surrounded by 6 mobs each with a different vulnerability -- hit each with a different type, then linearly drive the element mass on those into the boss, dealing magic damage to which he's vulnerable. Granted, that's just a tailored example. I wouldn't want anything that gimmicky, personally.

[Dargoth_Draconia]

This will be a short one. I long for a game in which the steps forward are packed with excitement and opportunities for fun. Not a rat-race to the end; the end being the only place where you will be considered someone by your fellow-players. End anti-newbie discrimination, make every level count. Slow down the pace of advancement. Smell the flowers. Struggle with difficult mobs at every level. Enter awesome events at every step.

This is actually more casual-player-friendly than accelerating and stultifying the game, so that almost anybody can get to the "fun-filled end."

End-obsessed game design fosters fascistic behavior in the community. Plus, it rewards the slacker that doesn't want a life, whereas it penalizes the player with the regular life. Making the advancement mechanics super-easy, the way the developers of this game sometimes seem to believe they should, does not improve the chances for anybody: The "Über" get to the end and get bored too early, the casuals never catch up, and are still discriminated.

Fill the world with one thousand Shposheas, only more complex and more attractive; make getting to level 10, 15, 20, 30 real challenges away from the repetitive levequests, and gratify us with oportunities that open up at every stage: Environmental puzzles, mysteriously coded scrolls, incomplete maps, a bit of Myst in Eorzea.

R

Man, I thought this was going to be a good post and I was terribly mistaken. End-obsessed game design as you call it fosters no such bad behavior in the community. The community fosters the behavior themselves and on top of that making advancement mechanics easy does improve the chances for everybody. They are able to advance at a quick enough pace to not fall too far behind and have an easy time catching up in contrary to whatever it is you are saying which makes no sense. The hardcore players do get bored easily currently because a total lack of content and once there is plenty of content with high difficulty and patches that constantly add content every couple months then they will be happy too.

Now I agree with you about making it where the hardcore players only seem to get rewarded for playing 40+ hours a week and that should not be the case, though if they are playing that much then honestly they have earned certain things and should have certain content geared for them. Just so you know I am not a hardcore player, I used to be years ago in FFXI but now I have very limited time to play. I would much rather advance faster or at the rate I want to and not be bound by something silly. What about the people who have everything leveled already? Make them start over? or what!?

I think you thought too much about what you would like to see in the game and didn't even bother to think how it would effect all the other players or players who do not see things in the same way as you do. Also you don't know what all will be in 2.0 or what kind of new content they will bring us if they will have stuff for the mid levels to make things interesting. FFXIV 2.0 Beta is just around the corner, perhaps you guys should save topics like this til after you see what they have in store for us.

[Maxthunder]

I really do hope Yoshida has found a way to advance through content that isn't the WoW quest grind. Final Fantasy is supposed to be an engaging story yes, but mob grinding has been an significant part of the series since the first game. Yes you can finish the game by just playing through the content, but you can not max out your character by doing so. I really do not want Yoshida to pollute this game with Walls of Text asking you to kill 9 guys only to proceed to the next wall of text asking you to kill nine guys. Its just Grinding XP, but you have to do it alone. If he has done what I hope he has, content will be very long quests that will advance your levels as you progress through them. Not 9 short quests to kill 9 guys full of text no one reads..

As of right now I have no faith in Yoshi and the reason being is: leveling with quest and dungeon (instances). I dont like quest leveling and I dont like instanced content. I prefer different place to camp and kill mobs. If Yoshi tends to do quests and dungeons to level that they stand to lose more players. Utimately if Yoshi dosent balance all content open world, exp grinds at camps, quest etc FFXIV will be the 1st Final Fantasy title to sink like a ship!

[Payadopa]

The truth is that "end game" is a lie. For most people it is far from the end of the game, they're probably going to spend 70% of their time at level cap vs the journey of 1-49. That is why there is such an emphasis on the "end game" in MMOs.

Very true. Still, new players must progress through it first. Even if there is flying unicorns and rainbows at the end of the road, if a player quits, he's probably gone for good. And just allowing players to speed through it is not adressing the core problem.

[Payadopa]

I, too, was surprised at FF XIII's sales numbers.

lol That was the first thing that came to my mind. Though, the story was nice and the game had a nice difficulty (well, later anyway, unlike XIII-2...), but that's another story entirely.

[Hyrist]

As of right now I have no faith in Yoshi and the reason being is: leveling with quest and dungeon (instances). I dont like quest leveling and I dont like instanced content. I prefer different place to camp and kill mobs. If Yoshi tends to do quests and dungeons to level that they stand to lose more players. Utimately if Yoshi dosent balance all content open world, exp grinds at camps, quest etc FFXIV will be the 1st Final Fantasy title to sink like a ship!

And, if those systems were added on top of already additional systems, would you be as upset?

You can grind for EXP. You can Quest for EXP, you can Raid for EXP. It sounds like he's jut creating options for people and that there's finally sufficient reward for those who prefer to spend their time out adventuring rather than hitting up the same monster types again and again. I mean, that's ok if that's your thing, but for too long other methods have been inefficient for leveling purposes.

Yoshi makes a presumption for what players will be doing in the game, but by no means dose he think 100% of the playerbase will follow the formula. It's a statistical impossibility.

Your faith is your own to give, but I have the distinct idea that the tone implicated by that interview you are hung up about is not correct. And even if it is, you have your alternatives. Who knows, you may even change your views and like it after experiencing it.

Try not to be so locked down in your opinions before sampling the actual product.

[bobbygunz]

What's the point of a "grind to cap" anyway except to waste everyone's time?

Unless they have a purpose to the journey, there's really little point in the exercise if all good content is reserved for endgame players. Making 200 badly designed quests to pad out the levels is no good reason, unless those quests are actually fun and worth doing.

Quest-grind, EXP-grind, it's all just the same thing at the end of the day. Grind!

They might as well just do an EXP grind and spare themselves the effort of making hundreds of quests everyone will skim through anyway.

[Nazrakin]

As of right now I have no faith in Yoshi and the reason being is: leveling with quest and dungeon (instances). I dont like quest leveling and I dont like instanced content. I prefer different place to camp and kill mobs. If Yoshi tends to do quests and dungeons to level that they stand to lose more players. Utimately if Yoshi dosent balance all content open world, exp grinds at camps, quest etc FFXIV will be the 1st Final Fantasy title to sink like a ship!

If you can sit there and admit that you have no faith in the development team, then why waste your time and money with the game? I'm sure Yoshi and co is aware that he may lose a few subs, but the goal of 2.0 is to reach the millions that are playing the other MMOs. Part of accomplishing that is to take the parts of those games that people like and adapt them to FFXIV.

This is already the most disastrous FF title ever release; thats the whole reason behind all these drastic changes.

[VytasBismarck]

Well, we can always hope for nice expansions after 2.0... And everyone who wishes for something amazing to happen before 2.0 - stop fooling yourself